


Life Can Be Easy (But Not Too Easy)

by Miss_M



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-27 01:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20940056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “Stalking is such a common word, Sarah. Really, it’s beneath you.”





	Life Can Be Easy (But Not Too Easy)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).

> I own nothing.

“Are you bored yet?” Jareth asked, meeting Sarah’s eyes in the mirror.

She finished touching up her lipstick and lowered her hand with barely a tremble. She felt proud of herself for that, and for the superior smile she returned to Jareth where he stood behind her. 

“I’m having the time of my life. You’re the one who’s bored. Bored enough to stop stalking me and just talk to me.” 

The corner of Jareth’s lips twitched, allowing Sarah a quick glimpse of a sharp tooth, all the better to eat her with. He crossed his arms and lounged against the powder-room wall covered in blue damask, completely at ease. Sarah felt certain that no one else would need the powder room for as long as their colloquy lasted.

“Stalking is such a common word, Sarah. Really, it’s beneath you.”

“You have been, though. Stalking me.” She had glimpsed him reflected in storefronts, met his eyes briefly across crowded pedestrian crossings, caught snatches of his laughter vanishing behind always the next corner, always three steps ahead of her. 

They were smiling at each other in the mirror now, like naughty children sharing a secret, only Sarah was no longer a child. She turned her back on the mirror so she could face Jareth properly, leaned the backs of her thighs against the edge of the marble counter to steady her. 

In the mirror, Jareth had been his slender, flamboyantly-dressed self. But face to face, his midnight-dark cape, his shoulders and hair seemed to spread like great wings, closing in around Sarah, like they were in a cave made out of his being. Like filling any space he found himself in was Jareth’s right and even the powder room at the country club, empty save for the two of them, belonged to Jareth’s realm, while nothing in the real world was completely solid and dependable. The thought made Sarah shiver, made her palms itch.

She gripped the counter with her hands on either side of her hips and lifted her chin. She was so glad he had come, on this night of all nights – the debutante ball Sarah had only agreed to because of the truce between she and her stepmother – but Sarah would not make it too easy. 

“Why are you here?” Sarah demanded, remembering her late mother, how her voice used to fill up the house while she ran lines, her gestures and posture too big for a mere suburban home. Jareth’s very presence demanded that Sarah be grand, that she become someone for him to attain. “Hoping for another debutante to wish a sibling or a parent away with the goblins?”

Jareth took a single step closer, yet his presence closed around Sarah like a fist in a velvet glove. She squeezed the counter edge, but to no avail. She kept her eyes on Jareth’s throat rather than his eyes or any other point lower down.

“Is that what you want?” Jareth asked, as though half in jest. “For me to make you jealous? Would such a small thing really please you, Sarah?”

His mockery, laced with teasing of a different kind though it was, she could handle. She replied in a patently fake sing-song: “I’ve seen what the Labyrinth has to offer. Oubliettes and False Alarms and the Cleaners, and who could forget the Eternal Stench! You’re welcome to any girl who would be satisfied with that.”

Jareth’s eyes glittered, black stars in a pale firmament, and for a moment Sarah quaked: had she mishandled the teasing? Had she finally gone too far with him? The thought of being tipped head-first into a dark hole with no way out or the foul-smelling bog and being left there terrified her only slightly less than the sudden certainty which came over her: that Jareth would sweep out of the powder room and never appear in her mirror or her peripheral vision again. She almost started to apologize, but she knew that _that_ would have been a mistake.

Jareth’s voice was low and affable. Sarah knew from experience that he spoke that way when he was being deadly serious. 

“Sarah, you have seen but a fraction of what the Labyrinth has to offer. It contains many more terrible places, true, and many more silly ones too. But it also has the Moon Stairs, the Glass Forest, the Rutted Garden Path of Minor Delights, and much more to astonish and amuse you.”

Sarah stared into his mismatched eyes, tried not to blink. 

She had to blink and glanced at his mouth when she did. It curved in a smile, both of his upper canines showing. _Oh what sharp teeth you have_, Sarah recited silently.

“And of course there’s the ball,” Jareth added.

“The ball? With the masks, and the poor defenseless creatures in boxes, and the time that flows too fast?” Sarah smirked, but he was so close, and she could still remember the feel of his arm around her waist, guiding her across the marble floor as over a cloud. 

“And sweet wine, and juicy, bitter fruit to eat, and a distinct lack of boys with two left feet and _pimples_.” He sounded so disgusted, and Sarah was so tired of the boys who attended cotillion, that she began to smile, but Jareth was not done speaking. “And so many hours to explore the possibilities.” 

Jareth glanced to the side, toward the pale pink door leading to the bathroom stalls, but when Sarah followed his gaze she saw instead the ornate clock, its face showing thirteen hours.

“What say you, Sarah? Shall we take thirteen hours and see where the Labyrinth may take us?”

Sarah started to speak, licked her lips, half hating herself for her dry mouth and half wondering (_hoping_) Jareth saw her do it. “How long before the hands start spinning faster?”

“You still take things too much for granted, I see.” 

Sarah could not remember moving, yet she stood facing the clock now, while Jareth’s breath stirred the hair by her left ear. 

“Go on, Sarah. Give in to your desires. Seize your pleasure.” She felt his weight shift behind her, his long hair brush her ear, his breath now bathe her right cheek and ear, his voice very nearly impatient. “Bite the peach.”

Sarah tried to jerk away from both Jareth and the clock, succeeded only in half falling against Jareth, his long body seeming to embrace her though his arms remained by his sides. She pushed against his chest with both hands and stood up and away from him, flushed, her debutante dress askew.

“Don’t you dare!” she cried. She could forgive him many things, but not the peach or making Hoggle give it to her.

Again she was certain that neither of them had moved, yet Jareth stood a respectable arm’s length away from her, as tall as a willow, the powder-room mirrors seeming to absorb and drown in the reflected blue sheen of his cape. Blue cape, blue walls, like the inside of a crystal ball. Jareth was not smiling now, and Sarah held her breath for what was to come.

“I promise that I won’t play you fair, Sarah,” Jareth said, “and I promise that you will enjoy it.” 

He should have held his hand out to her then, in all the books that’s what he would have done. But this had to be Sarah’s decision, or she would have hated him eventually, and she supposed that Jareth had grown as tired of that game as she had. 

Sarah exhaled and smoothed down her dress, feeling as underdressed for where she was going as if she’d been barefoot and her face smudged with charcoal. Underdressed, but not unprepared. All his stalking had given her sufficient time to think and to want, to build up her wants like a squirrel’s winter store of untouched nuts, till she was fairly bursting with unfulfilled desire. 

Sarah reached out her hand. Jareth took it.


End file.
